Will Muslim Immigration Trigger Wars in Europe?

Please make yourself clear: Will there be a "war" where Muslims try to take over Europe? Is there a rape "epidemic"?

I'll answer the second question first. My greatest strength as a blogger, which is sometimes also my weakness, is that I always look several decades ahead when I analyze events. Maybe I do extrapolate too much every now and then, but for the most part, it can be quite useful to think this way. Most people rarely do. Bjørn Stærk has himself answered claims from the media that bloggers are "too right-wing". We fill a need that is not met by the traditional media. I write a lot about problems regarding Muslims and immigration in general beacuse I believe these are very important and serious issues that are not dealt with properly by the media. I notice that Bjørn doesn’t really find anything factually wrong in the posts I have made about rapes, he merely objects to my choice of words. The only time I have used the term "rape epidemic" is in the case of Sweden, the very first post I ever made on this blog. I haven't used it since, but that doesn't have to mean that I was wrong in employing it the first time. The official number of rape charges in Sweden has more than tripled in 30 years. Sounds pretty bad to me, and I'm not the only one who reacts to these staggering numbers. Does a tripling of the numbers constitute an "epidemic"? Maybe, maybe not. But this game of semantics hardly matters to the women who are victims of this, while the authorities are unwilling to discuss whether this enormous increase may have something to do with the huge influx of Muslim immigrants Sweden has witnessed during those same 30 years. In the worst areas, people now seem to be so tired of inaction by the authorities that some of them have started taking matters into their own hands. Things have to be pretty bad before people in nanny-state Sweden resort to vigilante justice:Wrong man snatched in rape revenge

A man who was kidnapped in Malmö early on Monday morning was probably the victim of a revenge attack, police have said. Relatives of the rape victim contacted a woman from Malmö and two men from Gothenburg. The trio then rented a car, armed themselves with knives and sawed-off shotguns and went late Sunday night in search of the rapist. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before. It’s not about hardened criminals but everyday Swedes who chose to be vigilantes” Bo-Anders Jönsson from Malmö police told Skånska Dagbladet.

Regarding your first question: Yes, I’m pretty sure this immigration will trigger wars in Europe. This continent has simply lost control over its own borders, and the native population is being replaced at an astonishing rate in many of its major cities. Europe has a rather violent history, and migrations of this magnitude have usually triggered wars between the original population and the newcomers:

The population movements we are witnessing now are the largest and fastest in human history. In Europe, they can only be compared to the period often referred to as the Great Migrations, following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, during the 4th and 5th centuries, the total human population of the world was in the order of 200 million. Today, it is 30 times larger than that, and still growing fast. We also have communications that can transport people anywhere on earth within hours, and media that show ordinary people how much better life is in other countries. On top of that, the Romans didn't have human rights lawyers advocating that millions of barbarians be let into their lands. Is it a coincidence that the last time we had migrations like this was when large parts of the European continent suffered a complete civilizational breakdown? Is that what we are witnessing now? The second fall of Rome?

The situation becomes even worse when we enter another factor: Islam. The Islamic world is at war with pretty much everybody, everywhere. Both Thailandand the Philippines, countries where the Muslim population is not much larger than it is in some Western European countries, are facing war. Even Norway, a country with no colonial history and a Muslim population of only 2-3 %, has already experienced shootings to intimidate critics, gang fights, terror threats and attempted terror attacks, as well as visits from supporters of bin Laden. It's pretty amazing that such a small population group can create so much instability. And it's not a good omen for the future. As Herr Unswedenizer wrote to Bjørn in the other thread:

Actually, the burden of proof is on your side. Why should Norway be any different from, let's say Thailand? Everywhere in the world where muslims become 10-20% or more of the population, a war is started. What makes you think that Norway is so very special?

In fact the effect will be stronger and sooner, since the muslim population will be concentrated to the cities. So they will reach 10-20% very soon there, and at that there is also the process of Scandinavians leaving, which makes the ratio even higher. And still I haven't accounted for new fresh immigrants (or the illegal ones). At 10-20% of the population the Jihad enters a new phase. It never failed. Important current examples are Thailand, Phillipines or Nigeria.

Countries such as France, Holland and Sweden could soon reach a point where the Muslim population will create something akin to civil war, as it already has in the above mentioned nations:

FR D RIC ENCEL, PROFESSOR OF international relations at the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Paris and a man not known for crying wolf, recently stated that France is becoming a new Lebanon. The implication, far-fetched though it may seem, was that civil upheaval might be no more than a few years off, sparked by growing ethnic and religious polarization. In recent weeks, a series of events has underlined this ominous trend. On March 8, tens of thousands of high school students marched through central Paris to protest education reforms announced by the government. Repeatedly, peaceful demonstrators were attacked by bands of black and Arab youths--about 1,000 in all, according to police estimates. The eyewitness accounts of victims, teachers, and most interestingly the attackers themselves gathered by the left-wing daily Le Monde confirm the motivation: racism.

Some of the attackers openly expressed their hatred of "little French people." One 18-year-old named Heikel, a dual citizen of France and Tunisia, was proud of his actions. He explained that he had joined in just to "beat people up," especially "little Frenchmen who look like victims." He added with a satisfied smile that he had "a pleasant memory" of repeatedly kicking a student, already defenseless on the ground. Another attacker explained the violence by saying that "little whites" don't know how to fight and "are afraid because they are cowards." Rachid, an Arab attacker, added that even an Arab can be considered a "little white" if he "has a French mindset." The general sentiment was a desire to "take revenge on whites."

Once the Muslims got wind of the coming political windfall, they decided to settle scores with those idol-worshippers that Allah hates with such passion. So the Muslims initiated violence in West Punjab which is now in Pakistan (but was merely part of unified Punjab province earlier). Once Hindus and Sikhs on the Indian Hindu majority side got wind of Muslim barbarity, they retaliated. In that sense there is nothing unusual about it except scale. The story is almost always the same. Muslims initiate violence, Hindus and Sikhs retaliate. So once mob fury was unleashed, it got out of hand.

Muslims harass and attack the infidels until non-Muslims retaliate. At some point, it becomes a matter of simple survival, and then all kinds of political correctness and inhibitions will be dropped. The rapes we are seeing in Scandinavia are part of a much wider pattern. Please remember that "Asian" is Brit media newspeak for "Muslim" from Pakistan or Bangladesh:

Channel 4 has pulled a documentary about social workers in Bradford from its schedule after police warned it could increase racial tension. Due to be broadcast on Thursday, Edge of the City followed social workers and clients, including young white girls who had been abused by Asian men. It reported that white girls as young as 11 were being sexually abused by Asian men who encouraged their dependency on drugs over a period of time. In July 2001 Bradford was the scene of some of the worst race riots Britain has seen for 20 years. West Yorkshire Police said 326 officers were injured during the disturbances, leading to two stabbings, 219 arrests and an estimated £27m worth of damage.

Asian VigilantesAn investigation for Today has found disturbing evidence that Asian youths in parts of Oldham are trying to create no go areas for white people. Last year the police investigated record levels of racist attacks in Oldham.Of the 572 cases, 60% turned out to be white victims. Pakistanis make up the majority on the Glodwick estate just west of the town centre. Some youths speak the language of racial hatred. It's not clear whether this is bravado but their message is blunt... white people keep out. Many openly admit to carrying out what they see as revenge attacks on white people as part of a tit-for-tat campaign. One told us: "There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It's a matter of revenge. It's about giving as good as you can take."

These problems now exist throughout most of Western Europe, albeit to different degrees:

Europeans are now coming out of a deep dream of peace. There is no peace. They have done something tremendously stupid, and more than stupid, by allowing in people who bear in their mental luggage something inimical to Western ways, who are hostile to Western political and social understandings, and who -- save for a few who will leave Islam altogether -- cannot be integrated. These peopole, now close to 20 million, also reproduce at rates three to four times higher than the indigenous Infidels. The mathematics of this, and the misery of this, and the menace of this, is clear.

What we are seeing in the West is the opening salvoes of the continuation of the Jihad against Christendom, that was brought to a close at Vienna in 1683. The new onset has come about as a direct consequence of allowing Muslim immigration to the West. Muslims are mandated to the Jihad and it is foolish of us to expect that they will refrain from doing so. It is our foolishness that gave them the opportunity to do so from within.

I do not think our societies, geared as they are to free and open thought, can continue with this continuous assault on freedom. If this assault is not brought to a halt soon, then free society will start to perish, and with that the economy. It may not be evident immediately, but perish it will in the fullness of time. If the current trend of increasing conflict continues, then we are irrevocably headed in the direction of a major armed conflict with the Islamic world. This is also going to lead to a civil war within Europe of unimaginable proportions. Europe’s civil wars (WW 1 and 2) have not exactly been powder-puff affairs.

Even though this conflict may start out as civil wars in a handful of countries, it could spiral out of control and spread to much of the continent, dragging in foreign fighters from the Arab world. The Islamic world is now at war with most of the major powers on the planet at the same time, from the USA to India and from Russia to Western Europe. It is a real possibility that we will get a full-blown world war because of these events. If so, I don’t think this will happen 50 years from now, but within the coming generation:

Tens of millions of immigrants pour into Europe, changing the face of the continent forever without any real debate about the issue. People feel like strangers in their own cities, but are being silenced as "racists" if they object to this. There is a widespread feeling that Europe is descending into chaos, and that the governments are unwilling or incapable of stopping this. If this situation continues, some people will cry out for a Strong Man to “cleanse Europe of foreigners" and restore its honour and wounded pride. And He will step forward. By then, you won’t have a “Clash of Civilizations” in Europe, but rather a Clash of Fascisms: Euro-Fascism vs. Islamo-Fascism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali fears that if we don't take effective measures, now, ''the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights'': an Islamic one and a non-Islamic one.” She’s right. Major cities across the continent are now powder kegs of ethnic and religious tensions, built up after decades of failed immigration policies and an absence of a genuine debate. Common sense says that when you have a powder keg waiting to explode, adding even more powder is not the smartest thing to do.

Recognizing Islam is accepting your own death warrant. Muhammad said kill the unbelievers. You are an unbeliever. If you recognize Islam, you are agreeing to be killed. Isn't that stupid? Muslims in Europe have gained too much power. The more Muslims become powerful the weaker Europe becomes. Europeans must realize that Islam is not just another religion in their multi cultural religious rainbow but rather is their enemy. Islam aims to destroy their culture, their democracy and take away their freedom. They must realize that Muslims are not going to integrate in their countries but rather want to swallow them. If the Europeans do not wake up soon and do not start deporting the Islamists en masse and denouncing Islam as their enemy, they will be annihilated sooner than they can think. The threat of Islam today, is much greater than the threat of Nazism during the 1930s. Failure to address this threat will result in a war more devastating than the Second World War.

Danish Bank considers Sharia-loans

Jyske Bank is the first Danish bank to be considering the possibility of offering its Muslim customers a special so-called "sharia" or interest-free loan. According to the Koran, it is forbidden for Muslims to pay interest and therefore it is impossible for them to borrow money in the traditional way. But even if such loans were possible, it would be no cheaper for the customers because instead of paying interest, they would have to pay service charges. However, according to Danish tax regulations, whereas interest is tax deductible, service charges are not.

Tougher expulsion rules on the wayIntegration Minister, Rikke Hvilshøj, has announced plans to introduce much tougher rules for the deportation of criminal immigrants from Denmark. She said a yellow card would be given to any foreigner who commits a first criminal act. Any subsequent crime would mean automatic expulsion from the country. Exactly which offences could lead to expulsion have yet to be defined. The Minister has rejected a proposal from Liberal candidate for the post of Mayor of Copenhagen, Søren Pind, to withhold social benefits after a second offence and deport after a third.

Sweden: More children diagnosed with Tuberculosis

One of the downsides of the ongoing mass-immigration is that diseases we had worked carefully for generations to eradicate are now back. I used to know about tuberculosis mainly from the history books, but it is making a roaring comeback in many Western European nations. Anthony Browne in the London Times puts it like this (the link no longer seems to be working):

Britain must face some home truths about abroadIn the US, an official study concluded that immigration added just 0.1 per cent to GDP. The Treasury claimed that mass immigration is an economic boon, but one Treasury migration expert admitted to me that it could never conclude anything that could be used to justify racial hatred. While the economic benefits are marginal, the costs are great: it leads to massive overcrowding and congestion, overstretched public services, exacerbates the housing crisis, imports poverty, crime, public health problems such as HIV and TB, increases social tension, and creates parallel communities.

A further 21 children who attend a daycare centre in Stockholm have tested positive for tuberculosis, bringing the count up to 30 in total. The test results were formally confirmed Monday evening by Stockholm’s Infectious Disease Unit. 58 children were tested last week after a teacher from the Rainbow Daycare Centre in Bromma, a suburb of the capital, was diagnosed with TB. The children are all under seven years of age. TB usually goes to the lungs but it can invade the body’s organs and cause inflammation of the brain. Children are more susceptible than adults. A treatment of antibiotics over four to nine months, however, can help. Doctors at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control are now trying to trace the source of the infection. Tuberculosis is on the rise in Sweden with a 13% rise in cases since last year.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The hidden wives of Turkey

Kurds are usually talked about as "oppressed", both in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. They are. But many Kurds are also among the most hardline Muslims in the region. The most famous militant Islamist in Norway is Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi Kurd:

The hidden wives of TurkeyThe villages of south-east Anatolia, in the corner of Turkey that borders Iraq and Syria, are bleak, hauntingly beautiful places that do not give up their secrets lightly. It is part of what Kurds claim as their homeland, where years of violent struggle between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish government have left more than 30,000 killed. The government outlawed the practice of polygamy nearly a century ago. But Islamic custom can allow men to take up to four wives. In this devoutly Muslim region, it is estimated that nearly a quarter of all marriages are polygamous. Men like 32-year-old Resat Yagdi regard it as their birthright. He is a part-time electrician and onion farmer, with a beautiful wife and three children, one just a week old. But despite these blessings, he is determined to take a second wife to enhance his prosperity and prestige in the village. Iranian Kurds dream of independence and jobs

Can the several 35 million Kurds in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere hope to live some day in a united and independent Kurdistan? Shuan, a shopkeeper from Sardasht, the last town in Iranian Kurdistan perched on the Iraqi border, is convinced they can. “We succeeded 60 years ago. Why should we fail now?,” he shouts from the back of his shop. His tone is resolutely optimistic. Yet to date the vague attempts at independence have proven difficult, impossible even, in this remote region in Western Iran. Caught in a bind, the people here, as elsewhere in Kurdistan, are suffering from chronic unemployment. “Many qualified young people hang around on the streets, that’s if they don’t get lured into drug dealing in Iraq or Pakistan,” says Shuan ruefully. No one here will ever forget the heroism of one Qazi Mohammad, the legendary President of the Republic of Mehabad, a republic that lasted less than a year, from January to December 1946. Oppressed under Khomeini, the Kurdish people are still repressed today. Its journalists are subject to censorship and its youth to gradual assimilation. It is also difficult for ethnic Kurds to hold important government positions. On the Internet, for example, there is a wealth of sites that are not filtered. They are as numerous, as they are short-lived. “Their shelf-life is only a week, then the government gets its hands on them,” Shuan says. Four Kurdish television channels can now be received by satellite dish, a device strictly forbidden in the country of the mullahs. In Mahabad, two weekly Kurdish newspapers are published, Kousha and Rasat, but they are under state control.

Norwegian social benefits highest in Europe

Norway provides its citizens with the highest social security benefits of any country in Europe. This is shown by figures from the European statistics office Eurostat. The social benefits grants to Norwegians averaged 11,755 Euro in 2002, equal to NOK 93,200. This was NOK 37,700 higher than in Iceland, NOK 36,900 higher than in Finland, 19,200 higher than in Sweden and 12,300 higher than in Denmark. Compared with EU nations outside Scandinavia, the differences are even higher: According to Eurostat, the social benefits in Norway cost NOK 48,000 per citizen more than in Italy.Norway still best place to live

Norway will top a 2005 United Nations ranking as the best country in which to live for the fifth year in a row, the head of the UN Development Program (UNDP) said on Friday. Rich from North Sea oil and with a generous welfare state, Norway has led the world ranking since it ousted Canada from top spot in 2001. The annual list ranks countries by an index combining wealth, education and life expectancy. "The (2005) report comes out on September 7 and yes, Norway is ranked as number 1 on the human development index," UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis told a news conference in Oslo of the forthcoming report. He gave no other details of the ranking. Last year, Norway was followed by Sweden, Australia and Canada at the top, while Sierra Leone was the last of 177 countries listed. Dervis, on his first foreign trip since taking over as head of the UNDP this month, said the ranking was a reward for years of work by successive governments in Norway, the world's number 3 oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Study: Terrorists Exploit Immigration Laws

Suspected or convicted foreign-born terrorists have routinely exploited federal immigration laws over the last decade to enter or remain in the United States illegally, according to a report set for release Tuesday. Once in the country, some of them became naturalized citizens, says the report distributed by the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocate for stricter immigration policies. ``The attack of 9/11 was not an isolated instance of al-Qaida infiltration into the United States,'' the 46-page report found.``In fact, dozens of operatives both before and after 9/11 - other than the 9/11 hijackers - have managed to enter and embed themselves in the United States, actively carrying out plans to commit terrorist acts against U.S. interests or support designated foreign terrorist organizations,'' the report concluded.

This report covers the immigration histories of 94 terrorists who operated in the United States between the early 1990s and 2004, including six of the September 11th hijackers. Other than the hijackers, almost all of these individuals have been indicted or convicted for their crimes. The report builds on prior work done by 9/11 Commission and the Center for Immigration Studies, providing more information than has been previously been made public. The findings show widespread terrorist violations of immigration laws. The report highlights the danger of our lax immigration system, not just in terms of who is allowed in, but also how terrorists, once in the country, used weaknesses in the system to remain here. The report makes clear that strict enforcement of immigration law – at American consulates overseas, at ports of entry, and within the United States – must be an integral part of our efforts to prevent future attacks on U.S. soil.

Canada sends navy to Arctic north

Canada is sending its navy back to the far northern Arctic port of Churchill after a 30-year absence. The visit by two warships to the area is the latest move to challenge rival claims in the Arctic triggered by the threat of melting ice. The move follows a spat between Canada and Denmark, over an uninhabited rock called Hans Island in the eastern Arctic region. A visit there by Canada's defence minister last month angered the Danes. Now two Canadian warships, the Shawinigan and the Glace Bay, are on a mission to display what Canada calls its territorial sovereignty over parts of the Arctic it believes are within its borders. The dispute seems rather odd, when scientists say the region around the island is unlikely to be rich in oil or other natural resources. It is also believed that global warming is causing the rapid melting of the ice across the Arctic, and that could make the legendary North-West Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific passable for ships for the first time. The US has already said it regards the passage as an international strait, not Canadian waters. Russia, Norway and Denmark also have competing claims to the continental shelf and the natural resources such as gas and oil that may lie beneath the sea bed.Canadian satellite to watch over Hans IslandThe discord between Denmark and Canada over an Arctic rock island is skyrocketing, after the Canadian federal government announced its plans to invest hundreds of millions in satellite images of its northernmost regions. The private-owned satellite is to be launched next summer, and is expected to send images for the next seven years. ‘Polar Epsilon is a transformational first step for Canada in using space to support the sovereignty and security of the Arctic region, including maritime security and continental defence together with the U.S.A. at the strategic level,’ said ministerial briefing notes obtained by The Canadian Press, a national news agency. According to Danish national broadcaster DR, the Canadian news agency linked the surveillance scheme with Canada's dispute with Denmark over Hans Island, a tiny rock island between western Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.

Geologists recently have learned more about the conditions on our planet that could have made life possible as long as 4 billion years ago. And thanks to the DNA revolution, biologists now can trace the development of modern organisms — ranging from simpler forms such as mushrooms and flowers to more complicated ones such as humans — back to primitive microbes that lived in the ocean more than 2.7 billion years ago. At some point in between, lifeless molecules — combinations of atoms — learned to eat, breathe, move and reproduce. No one's certain when and how they did it, however. As early as 150 million years after the Earth formed, 4.5 billion years ago, the planet had cooled enough to have an atmosphere, an ocean and some dry land. Chemical reactions between hot water and rocks produced more and more complex molecules. Later, probably sometime between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, these inorganic molecules grew and clotted together in "protocells." They formed organic compounds necessary for life. At some point in this process came the crucial, still-unexplained step: the advance from clumps of molecules to living cells containing an early version of DNA known as RNA. DNA contains the instructions to make proteins, the building blocks of every living thing. "I believe life began very early, before 4 billion years ago". However, the evidence for such a quick start was limited to "squiggles in the rocks" in Greenland and Australia that might represent ancient fossils. The oldest positive evidence for living microbes is dated at 2.7 billion years ago.

Poland takes pride in Solidarity

The former Polish President Lech Walesa has paid tribute to the independent trade union Solidarity which played a key role in the collapse of communism. The strike by Solidarity members "changed the face of the Earth," Mr Walesa told the Polish parliament. He was launching three days of celebrations on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity, founded by him and fellow shipyard workers in Gdansk. Russia stays away as Poland celebrates 25 years of Solidarity

The democratically elected leaders of former Soviet republics will be there. But the President of Russia will not. It is an anniversary the Kremlin would rather forget. Foreign delegations are making their way to Poland today to pay their respects at events marking the 25th anniversary of the birth of Solidarity, the first free trade union of Communist eastern Europe. Solidarity's former leader Lech Walesa, the electrician turned president who transformed the workers' organisation into a rival for political power with the Communist Party, will make a speech claiming that the Solidarity movement ended the Cold War, set hundreds of millions of people free far beyond the borders of Poland, and enabled the creation of a truly united Europe. Vaclaw Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic who led his country's "velvet revolution" towards democracy in 1989, has publicly thanked Poland for beginning the popular struggle against Communism in 1980, far earlier than any country in the region. There wasn't even a small sign of changes in Czechoslovakia then," Mr Havel said on Friday. "But the events in Poland ... had a definite influence on future changes here and in other countries from the Communist bloc." Some Poles see Solidarity's final victory in 1989 as a shameful compromise by the trade union leadership with tyrants, and resent the presence of President Alexander Kwasniewski, himself a former Communist, at what has been billed a celebration of freedom.

Monday, August 29, 2005

The Palestinian Authority will continue to work toward moving Yasser Arafat's tomb to the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department, announced Sunday. Erekat, who was speaking during a meeting with PA security officers in Jericho, said the issue of transferring the late Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat's grave from Ramallah to Jerusalem was a "trust" deposited with the PA. "From the Israeli perspective the issue is not on the agenda and neither do I expect it to be on the agenda," said Mark Regev, Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman in response to a query by The Jerusalem Post last night. "Arafat's legacy is one of political extremism, terrorist violence, and an inability to be flexible at crucial points in the negotiations. Instead of putting him up on a pedestal, thoughtful Palestinians should be thinking critically of his failures and how not to repeat the same mistakes," remarked Regev. Arafat, who died last November, is reported to have expressed his wish to be buried in Jerusalem. Although he did not leave a written will to this effect, PA officials, including the mufti of Jerusalem, were quoted as saying that Arafat had told them of his wish long before his death.

In 2020, America Will Still Dominate Global Economy

As my readers would know, I'm pretty sure that the USA will remain the dominant global power for a long time to come. The real scramble is for the places behind. I don't think it's impossible that China can become number 2, but most people underestimate the size and number of hurdles China will have to face over the next generation. India's economic growth sounds plausible. India will become a significant global player, but perhaps not a superpower in the true sense of the word. Europe is the sick man of the world, and will until 2020 be fertile ground for riots and extremist political movements, perhaps even war. What is happening in Europe cannot be described as anything less than a civilizational crisis, with collapsing demographics, failed economies and weakening trust between the populace and their political elites. And if we try to fix our shortcomings by increasing immigration, we will get millions of Muslims from neighboring states, who will destabilize our countries even more. It's a dangerous mix, and I'm not sure I can see any short-term solutions to it:

What will the world's economy look like in 2020? Combining the theories of growth and analyzing the evolution of development in the 34 principal countries in the world, this study apprehends the principal factors affecting growth and the trends at work today. In 2020, the United States will remain the world superpower, with a total GNP of approximately $17 trillion to $18 trillion. Thanks to its dynamic demographics (1% annual population growth), a productivity and a competitiveness amongst the best in the world (currently second in the world and far out in front of Germany (13th) or France (26th) according to statistics from the World Economic Forum), and thanks also to its constant drive to create and innovate, and with flexibility due to the mobility of its labor force, the United States will maintain a clear advantage over China and India and will widen the gap with Europe. With average per capita salaries of approximately $55,000, the income of the average American in 2020 will be 1.5 to 2 times greater than that of a European; five times higher than that of a Chinese and nine times more than that of an Indian (approximately $6,000 per capita). China will indisputably be the world's second greatest economic power, with a GNP of some $14 trillion, or three times higher than today. That of course assumes that beyond the inevitable short-term risks, no major social crisis interrupts the long-term dynamics: a progressive opening to the outside, an increase in domestic consumption, strong growth - in particular in foreign investment, and the rapid improvement in the qualifications of China's working population (China already has the same number of engineers and technicians as the West, and more than any of the large European countries). Even more than today, China in 2020 will be the industrial workshop of the world. Paradoxically, one of its handicaps will be an aging population, due to the delayed impact of its "one child policy." By 2020, the median age in China will be approximately 40 years, which will be higher than in the United States. The world's third greatest economic power will be India, but far behind the first two, with a GNP of about $7 trillion. If China can be held out as the world's future industrial workshop, India will undoubtedly be one of the great service societies.

In Europe, Germany, France, along with Italy and the United Kingdom, should lose ground in the world competition with a GNP per country of about $2 to 2.5 trillion. While European countries will remain rich in terms of per capita income (about $32,500), their relative weight will decline with their demographics and weaker growth (on average, almost half as much as the United States). I dare say that to overcome Europe's demographic shortcomings in the years to come, it will be necessary for us to lay down and implement a more finely-tuned immigration policy.

The extent of the recent shift in British public opinion against the European Union (EU) - even among business folk, hitherto its greatest supporters - has been remarkable. It is a shift born of experience, especially the unarguable fact of the euro zone's well-established economic failure, but also the growing realisation that the EU, with its mountain of regulations and wasteful farm subsidies, is essentially beyond reform. The fact that other European countries, for their own reasons, have also turned against the EU has refuted the myth that only Little Englanders or xenophobes oppose the EU.

Britain now desperately needs an opposition with a comprehensive, alternative vision of British foreign policy that breaks with the Foreign Office's post-war obsession with Europe. Such a vision would flesh out new trading and defence alliances for Great Britain on an international scale to meet the needs of an age of globalisation, the continued dominance of the United States, and to the rise of China, India and the rest of Asia. It would also require a new, much looser relationship with the EU. None of the pretenders to the Tory throne, however, is offering anything like this. Apart from the rhetoric, of course, nothing really ever changes in the EU. A report from the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in Washington last week found that the EU protects its farming more than anybody in the world. The EU also subsidises exports dumped on developing nations more than any other bloc, accounting for 85-90% of the world's export subsidies. These figures demolish the widely-held belief that the EU and US are equally protectionist when it comes to agriculture. America is bad enough; but the EU is beyond the pale.

The blunt truth is that the euro zone's poor economic performance and high unemployment are likely to be with us for the foreseeable future while the Brussels bureaucracy is forever trapped in its own regulatory mindset. As a result it is only realistic to conclude that there is little hope for the EU. It stands condemned to permanent decline, making it time for Great Britain to start thinking of forging a new, looser relationship with its European neighbours, most of whom seem resigned to accepting decline. Working out how to do this should be one of the Tories' main concerns in their current leadership contest. Clearly, this is not a task for Mr Clarke; but it is easier to rule him out than to identify anybody who is up to the job.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

To Bjørn Stærk, About Rapes

Bjørn Stærk is the "grand old man" of Norwegian blogging. He started writing before I had even heard of the word "blog", and is still one of the most widely read bloggers in this country. We strongly disagree when it comes to Islam, but let's leave that aside for a moment, and focus on the specific case of the "missing rape numbers". I have published most of this information both in Norwegian and in English before, but I will be happy to repeat it, as many times as it takes:

You may want to consult other sources than Fjordman when it comes to daily life in Eurabia. Immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics. But the picture he paints of Europe as a continent under siege by sex-crazed Arabs has as much to do with the Europe I know as I guess the picture Michael Moore paints of the US has to do with the real US. (...) Fjordman's analysis is extremely marginal, and this can only be explained by some official conspiracy to keep the truth hidden if you believe Norway is a socialist dictatorship. Which, contrary to what some would have it, we aren't.

I know perfectly well that my view is a minority view, although that doesn't have to indicate that I'm wrong. I wouldn't say that I am "extremely marginal", as I receive significant support in Internet discussions about this, including from Norwegian women who have personal experience with harassment from immigrants. Regarding "conspiracies" or not, just have a look at these simple facts: In september 2001, statistics from the Oslo Police Departement showed that non-Western immigrants, who constitute a minority of Oslo's population, were involved in two out of three rape charges. This was reported and discussed in at least two of our largest newspapers, Aftenposten and Dagbladet. I have later emailed and corresponded with several journalists from other major media about this case. Several women's groups commented the numbers in 2001, as did Odd Einar Dørum, our Minister of Justice during the past four years, who was appalled by the statistics and demanded that all the numbers should be put on the table. I've been digging into this case for some time, and so far nobody, including the ladies in Human Rights Service, have seen any numbers indicating the percentage of immigrants involved in rapes since 2001, despite the fact that individual cases of brutal rapes and gang rapes involving Norwegian girls and immigrants are reported again and again and again. The total number of rape charges in 2005 reached the highest level ever recorded in Oslo.

So how come neither the media, the women's groups nor our Minister of Justice, who all knew about these statistics, have asked to have them published since 2001? If you know about numbers published later than 2001, I'd love to see them. If not, where are they? The information that is available strongly indicates that our immigration policies have contributed to making Norwegian women more unsafe in their own capital. A lot of Norwegians would find this highly interesting and relevant information, considering the fact that we are two weeks away from important national elections where several of the parties want to increase immigration. So how come we don't get to know? And isn't this rather embarrassing for a nation that likes to portray itself as a champion of "women's rights"?

Maybe I suffer from paranoia, Bjørn, but there's something fishy here. I think this story stinks, and I'd like to know where the smell comes from. Don't you?

Two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. The number of rape cases is also rising steadily. Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.

I guess rape is just a different form of cultural expression... hoookay. An incredibly revealing article that tells us all we need to know about the multiculturalist fetish in Europe and some parts of North America, not to mention the need for change within Islam. Thanks to Maarten at the Swedish site "Terror Watch" for the pointer. Apparently, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65 percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed by "non-Western" immigrants – a category that, in Norway, consists mostly of Muslims. The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (who was described as having "lived for many years in Muslim countries") as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. One reason for the high number of rapes by Muslims, explained the professor, was that in their native countries "rape is scarcely punished," since Muslims "believe that it is women who are responsible for rape." The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."

If one leading expert is to be believed, the sharp rise in the number of rapes in this over the last 5 years is largely attributable to a group of unemployed and alienated immigrants. 'Over the last 5-10 years there has an increasing tendency to marginalise and alienate immigrants,' says Professor Flemming Balvig, a criminologist at Copenhagen University. 'As a result, many second generation immigrants have reacted against this through various types of criminal activity, including rape.'

Alarmed at last week's police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

The numbers published in September 2001 were discussed in at least to out of Norway's three largest newspapers: Aftenposten and Dagbladet. A leading member of the Liberal Party (Venstre), Odd Einar Dørum, demanded all the numbers be put on the table: "A scumbag is a scumbag, regardless of skin color". Four years later, Dørum is Minister of Justice, and nobody has seen these statistics since 2001. The number of rape charges in Oslo have continued to rise, reaching record levels:

Sweden: Bomb threat against provincial daily

Bomb threat against provincial dailyReporters Without Borders voiced shock today that the Norrköpings Tidningar (a daily based in Norrköping, southwest of Stockholm) received an anonymous letter on 23 August warning that four bombs would be set off in the town, one of them next to the newspaper, if it did not stop carrying reports about organised crime and did not apologise for the reports already published. "We are outraged by this attempt to silence journalists by such methods," the press freedom organisation said. "We call on the Swedish authorities to take these threats seriously and to do everything necessary to track down those responsible." Reporters Without Borders added : "A threat like this should be a wake-up call in a country such as Sweden, where press freedom is taken for granted." This is the second time the newspaper has been the target of threats of this nature in a month. An anonymous letter received on 8 August contained death threats against one of its reporters who had written a story about organised crime rings. Editor Karl-Åke Bredenberg said : "This is very serious, this is our possibility of working in a free society that is being threatened. But we won't be silenced."

A Norwegian researcher warns that ethnic gangs can give Norway the kind of immigrant-related organized crime that accompanied waves of migration to the USA. Dr. Inger-Lise Lien has just finished a report commissioned by the Department of Local Government and concludes that the ethnic groups themselves are worried. "Ethnic-based gang crime can give Norway the same problems that the USA has had with the Mafia. Society, and most of all the immigrants themselves, will be hit hard," said Lien, researcher at NIBR (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research).

A rare protest by Chinese journalists at a leading national newspaper offers a window into the intensifying severity of information control in China and the sometimes sophisticated resistance to it by Chinese journalists. A frank 19-page letter by Li Datong, a senior editor at China Youth Daily, details a struggle between the news staff and senior party officials over policies that the journalists say would encourage propaganda. Mr. Li's letter, leaked Aug. 17, took issue with a new "appraisal system" introduced by chief editor Li Erliang. It would tie promotion and monetary reward to praise by party officials. In the new "pay for praise" policy, reporters would receive 50 pay credits for high reader response, but between 90 and 120 pay credits for stories praised by communist youth league officials. "If you don't change this appraisal system, our paper will become a complete fake," Li wrote in the dissent. The larger backdrop is a nearly two year push by the powerful central propaganda department to more firmly control and limit expression. News services are under orders not to quote Chinese intellectuals not approved by the party. Newspapers may not report events or issues in other parts of the country unless a regional party paper has first reported the news. Popular Internet discussion groups have been blocked. Cellphone text messages are filtered.

The GFoC is not impenetrable. Many bloggers try to make it hard for the great cybernannies to find them by using replacement characters. Some replacement words include M@o and F---- G---. Additionally, many bloggers will use just about anything to avoid using the T-word (whether it is 1 or 2). Humans can still easily decipher the meanings, but a search for the banned words won't find them. China has a lot of people but hiring people to read every webpage and blog doesn't seem to be all that practical, even to the Chinese government. In the blogosphere, one of the most common comments on the subject is criticizing the Western companies that facilitate China's censorship. The most often criticized companies include Cisco, Microsoft, and Google.

With a total of 61 Internet users in detention at the start of May 2004, China is the world's biggest prison for cyber-dissidents. It is also the country where the technology for e-mail interception and Internet censorship is most developed. What's more, the authorities recently decided to tighten the vice and roll back the few gains made by Internet users in recent years. The Chinese authorities use a clever mix of propaganda, disinformation and repression to stifle online free expression. Initial hopes that the Internet would develop into an unfettered media and help liberalize China have been dashed. What has happened in China has shattered generally accepted ideas. The Internet can indeed become a propaganda media. On its own, it will not suffice to support the emergence of democracy in any significant way. And it can be totally controlled by a government that equips itself to do so. Indeed, the way the Chinese government has sabotaged online dissent offers a model for dictatorships around the world.China - Annual report 2005

The government continued its privatisation of the media and kept up its ruthless harassment of reformist journalists. The written press, experiencing competition for the first time, took some chances but was monitored and sanctioned by the propaganda department. The government has deployed huge resources to maintain the monopoly of state radio and television CCTV and the press agency Xinhua. Systems such as a "great wall of sound" allowing it to scramble international radio were stepped up. With the help of French company Thalès, ALLISS aerials were set up in every corner of the country to block foreign radio waves. Thousands of dishes have already been removed from homes. Despite everything, the press has grown bolder in challenging officials about social issues and disasters such as the death of 166 miners in Shaanxi Province in November.

Muslims suffer double stress rates from London bombings

The stress caused by the 7/7 bombings in London was far more keenly felt by Muslim residents compared with other inhabitants of the capital, according to a psychological study published in the online version of the British Medical Journal. Sixty-one per cent of Muslim commuters surveyed suffered substantial stress in the days following the first terrorist attacks on the city's transport system - almost double the proportion felt by other Londoners. "One can speculate it could be fear of reprisals and being upset about the misusing of their religion [to justify] terrorism," said one of the researchers, Neil Greenberg, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

Britain is a terrible place to live and anti-terrorist laws there make life as an animal in a jungle far safer, a top Iranian cleric said Friday, AFP reported. "Day by day, corruption, tyranny, felony, insecurity and different dangers are attacking human society. Just look at the fight against terrorism in Britain," Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said in a Friday prayer sermon. "All gatherings are under the microscope. People should know they are being watched. In cinemas, parks, streets and even in the railway stations, cameras are watching," he said, asking "what kind of security is this when people are constantly monitored?" British police, he said, can also "arrest anyone without any evidence or pressing charges". "Is this life for a human being? No animal in a jungle lives with the amount of insecurity that they have there," he alleged, slamming British authorities for also "spreading insecurity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine."

The demographics of radical Islam

I have heard Samuel P. Huntington make the argument that very high birth rates is what is fueling the current unrest in the Islamic world. I think that's nonsense, Islam is fueling it. But demographics are helping, yes:Spengler: The demographics of radical IslamDemographics still provide vital strategic information, albeit in quite a different fashion. Today’s Islamists think like the French general staff in 1914. Islam has one generation in which to establish a global theocracy before hitting a demographic barrier. Islam has enough young men - the pool of unemployed Arabs is expected to reach 25 million by 2010 - to fight a war during the next 30 years. Because of mass migration to Western Europe, the worst of the war might be fought on European soil. Although the Muslim birth rate today is the world’s second highest (after sub-Saharan Africa), it is falling faster than the birth rate of any other culture. By 2050, according to the latest UN projections, the population growth rate of the Muslim world will converge on that of the United States (although it will be much higher than Europe's or China's). Excluding Indonesia, the Muslim’s world literacy rate stands at only 53%, against 81% for China; Arab literacy is only 50%. Only 1% of the population owns a personal computer. It is delusional to believe that the Arab world, which now exports (net of oil) as much as Finland, might come to compete with China, India and the rest of Asia in the global market for goods and services. Just as the Muslim population peaks, the one bounty that nature has bestowed upon the Arabs, namely oil, will begin to diminish. In short, the Muslim world half a century from now can expect the short end of the stick from the modern world. But at the moment it has 25 million idle young men. A great many of them are likely to emigrate to Europe, including Eastern Europe, where populations are stagnant and about to decline. A Muslim takeover of Western Europe surely is a possible outcome.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Finland turns down US request to give asylum to Chinese Muslims held in Guantanamo

Finland is just beyond Political Correctness:

Finland turns down US request to give asylum to Chinese Muslims held in GuantanamoA group of 15 Chinese Muslims, or Uighur, being held in the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are still being kept at the prison, although they had been cleared for release nearly two years ago. The Washington Post reports that the US does not know what to do with the prisoners. Experts believe that if they were sent to China, they could face torture or execution. The US has asked about 20 countries, including Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey to give them asylum. The US Defense Department reportedly ordered the release of 15 of the Uighur already in late 2003, and again in March this year. Five of the group had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were captured by Pakistani bounty hunters in order to cash in on the rewards offered by the United States for Muslim extremists in the area. Ten of the prisoners were classified as "fairly harmless". They had operated against the Chinese Communist government. Seven of the Uighur were classified as "enemy combatants" and were kept imprisoned.

Space radiation may select amino acids for life

Space radiation preferentially destroys specific forms of amino acids, the most realistic laboratory simulation to date has found. The work suggests the molecular building blocks that form the "left-handed" proteins used by life on Earth took shape in space, bolstering the case that they could have seeded life on other planets. Amino acids are molecules that come in mirror-image right- and left-handed forms. But all the naturally occurring proteins in organisms on Earth use the left-handed forms - a puzzle dubbed the "chirality problem". "A key question is when this chirality came into play," says Uwe Meierhenrich, a chemist at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France. One theory is that proteins made of both types of amino acids existed on the early Earth but "somehow only the proteins of left-handed amino acids survived", says Meierhenrich. Meierhenrich and colleagues have a different theory. "We say the molecular building blocks of life were already created in interstellar conditions," he told New Scientist. The team believes a special type of "handed" space radiation destroyed more right-handed amino acids on the icy dust from which the solar system formed. This dust, along with the comets it condensed into, then crashed into Earth and other planets, providing them with an overabundance of left-handed amino acids that went on to form proteins. Scientists Mess with the Speed of LightResearchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light. Or is it all an illusion? Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments. “This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive procedure that works at any wavelength,” said Luc Thévenaz, lead author of the study detailing the research. Using a technique called Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, the researchers were able to slow down or ratchet up the speed of light like the gas pedal on a car. They succeeded in reducing the speed of light by almost a factor of 4 (although that’s still plenty fast at 46,500 miles per second), but even more dramatically, the team was also able to speed up the speed of light. Light in a vacuum travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, but a popular misconception is that, according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, nothing in the universe can travel faster than this speed. This seeming paradox can be resolved because a pulse of light is actually made up of many separate frequency components, each of which moves at their own velocities. This is known as the pulse’s phase velocity.

A survey released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center found more than four in 10 Mexicans are willing to leave their country to live in the US. One in five would risk a dangerous, illegal border crossing. Most surprising, one in three college graduates wants to flee. Before Washington takes up immigration reform this fall, it needs to take a hard look at Mexico's disillusionment. Already, one in eight adults born in Mexico now lives in the US. And the Mexican economy is kept afloat partially by an estimated $16 billion sent back by immigrants to relatives. Such numbers reveal a people so fed up with Mexico's dysfunctional politics and stagnant economy that their nationalism is wilting. While more than half of Mexico's 106 million people are officially poor, the Pew survey found an inclination to migrate "evident across a broad swath" of the population. This wide push to leave is probably now as strong as the pull of higher wages, social advancement, and family connections in the US. And yet, Mexican leaders remain in denial about this propensity for mass exodus. All this spells trouble for proposals by President Bush and some in Congress to set up a temporary worker program as a way to reduce the burden of illegal migration.

Women turn to internet for truth about their date

ONE in three women prepare for blind dates by spying on their prospective partners via the internet to obtain information about their careers, their hobbies and what they look like, a new study has found. Increasing numbers of men are also using internet search engines to carry out so-called "suitability checks" before meeting their date. And private investigators have reported an increase in clients whose suspicions about their partners have been driven by "i-spying". The study found about 35 per cent of women said they had no qualms about going even further and looking at messages on the mobile phone of a partner or date. The UK poll of 3,000 people by Onetel, a broadband provider, found women were far more likely to admit to snooping than men, with just half the number of males confessing they had sneaked a look at their partners' text messages.

They skulk in, alone or dragged by their wives or girlfriends - follicularly endowed fellows seeking a drastic solution to their body hair hang-ups: waxing. "They're somewhat scared and kind of shy because it's new to them," says Hector Peña, general manager of Manhattan's Nickel. The spa for men has seen a surge over the past two years in the number of clients willing to subject their skin to those strips of white muslin all in the name of confidence - on the beach and in bed. Backs, shoulders, chests, brows and (gulp) nethers are increasingly fair game for de-furring. (Or "manscaping," as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Fab Five call it.) Forget the tufted torsos epitomized by heretofore hunks like Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck - they've gone the way of the gold medallion necklace. Hollywood is taking a hard line against hairiness this year.

Progress Party leader Carl I. Hagen sees the fight against terrorism as a fight against Islam. "I know that not all Muslims are terrorists, but we have seen that all terrorists are Muslims," Hagen told Aftenposten after an appearance on TV 2 on Thursday, referring to the attacks in London and New York. Hagen said that comparisons to Northern Ireland and Basque terrorism in Spain were "national conflicts" that did not fit into the picture. On TV 2's program Hagen said his party wanted tougher measures to battle terrorism, and said that "we must expel people who resist western values and encourage terrorism". Hagen said that measures must be taken against those who spread fear and rejected the idea that his stance might do the same. "No, no absolutely not. We fight for democracy and freedom of speech," Hagen said. The head of SOS-Racism, Trond Thorbjørnsen, believes that Hagen runs the risk of standing accused of fearmongering if such legislation is passed. "It is peculiar that a law and order party distinguishes between terrorism in internal Christian conflicts and terrorism in international conflicts where Muslims are involved. This doesn't matter much to the victims," Thorbjørnsen said.

The Labor Party has not been so popular since May 2000, with 34.6 percent of the vote in this week's political party poll by Opinion for Aftenposten. The party is up 7.2 percent points in the past week Jens Stoltenberg has never had such numbers since taking over as party leader in 2002. The swelling in Labor ranks is due to mobilizing voters that sat out the previous election, and they are also stealing supporters from potential coalition ally, the Socialist Left Party (SV). The so-called 'red-green' alliance of Labor, SV and the Center Party would gain 94 seats, well over the 85 needed for a majority.

India rejects Arab conditions for UNSC seat, won't cut off ties with IsraelAt a meeting in Amman, Jordan, two weeks ago, Arab envoys told the Indian special envoy, C.R.Gharekhan, that Arab states would support India’s permanent representation in the UN Security Council if it broke off relations with Israel, but this was flatly turned down. Top sources said that foreign minister Natwar Singh has been angered by the conditionalities imposed by countries willing to support Indian’s UNSC bid, and the Arab decision has irked him further, although that did not stop the Indian envoy from stating that India related to the Arab states and Israel on different planes, and one was not and could not be at the cost of the other. Foreign office officials said that Arab diplomats raised the issue in the context of resettling Palestinians in the Gaza Strip vacated by Israel, in which India has offered to assist with construction. The Arab diplomats pointed to the large number of Israeli delegations visiting India, and Gharekhan clarified that they were not all of political or military nature, but also related to agriculture, investments, and so on, and pointed out that the window provided for Arab investments in India ran dry. The Arabs said that together with terminating relations with Israel publicly, they expected India to involve in the Middle East peace process and raise regional concerns in the UN in return for support for Security Council membership, but this was unacceptable.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Stagger on, weary Titan

From Al-Guardian:Stagger on, weary Titan If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to Washington in 2005. Imperial gravitas and massive self-importance. That sense of being the centre of the world. Hyperpower. Top dog. And yet, gnawing away beneath the surface, the nagging fear that your global supremacy is not half so secure as you would wish. As Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, put it in 1902: "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate." The United States is now that weary Titan. In the British case, the angst was a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Boer war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defied the mightiest military the world had seen; concern about the rising economic power of Germany and the United States; and a combination of imperial overstretch with socio-economic problems at home. Iraq is America's Boer war. A recent article in the New York Times plausibly estimated the prospective long-term cost of the Iraq War at more than $1 trillion. Increasingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran quietly calls the shots in the Shia south of Iraq. As the Washington joke goes: the war is over, and the Iranians won.

China and India are to the United States today what Germany and America were to Britain a hundred years ago. China is now the world's second largest energy consumer, after the United States. In the foreign reserve stakes, the US comes only ninth, after Singapore and just before Malaysia. According to some economists, the US has an effective net savings rate of zero. This country does not save; it spends. If you are, by any chance, of that persuasion that would instinctively find this a cause for rejoicing, pause for a moment to consider two things: first, that major shifts of power between rising and falling great powers have usually been accompanied by major wars; and second, that the next top dog could be a lot worse. So this is no time for schadenfreude. It's a time for critical solidarity. A few far-sighted people in Washington are beginning to formulate a long-term American strategy of trying to create an international order that would protect the interests of liberal democracies even when American hyperpower has faded; and to encourage rising powers such as India and China to sign up to such an order. That is exactly what today's weary Titan should be doing, and we should help him do it.

Norwegian Government Paying Jihad Education in Pakistan?

PESHAWAR, Aug 25 : Additional Chief Secretary NWFP Mr. Mir Liaq Shah and Mr. Alfe Arne Ramselin, Minister Councilor/ Acting Ambassador, Royal Norwegian Embassy jointly signed the work plan for “Basic Education Improvement Project” here on Thursday. According to the approved work plan, a grant amounting to Rs.580.808 million would be provided to the Frontier Government by the government of Norway to be spent on training of 4484 primary school teachers, around 27000 School Managers, construction of 300 local Circle Offices and strengthening of existing teacher training institution etc. Secretary School & literacy, Additional Secretary P&D and Project Authorities were present on the occasion.

NWFP is the North-West Frontier Province, along the border with Afghanistan. This is one of the most infamous and lawless regions in Pakistan, and one of the regions where many ex-Taliban fighters and maybe even Osama bin Laden himself have been hiding. This is sharia land, and any money spent on "education" here must be assumed to go at least partly to teach Jihad. No doubt the Pakistanis say that giving people education is the best assurance against "extremism". And the Scandinavian suckers believe them. They are probably laughing all the way to the bank, with my tax money in their pockets. Aaaaaaaarggh!

An MPA of the ruling Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Thursday tabled two private bills in the NWFP Assembly suggesting that music and dance in public places and educational institutions, and using photographs of women in advertisements be declared penal offences punishable by up to five years in prison along with a fine of up to Rs5,000 and Rs10,000, respectively. The bill pertaining to photographs of women reads: "Photograph means a photograph of a woman obtained through camera or hand drawing/painting or portrait, whether factual or artificial, which may amount to any incentive to sensuality or excitement of impure thoughts in the mind of an ordinary man of normal temperament; or tends to corrupt those minds which are open to such immoral influence, or which is deemed to be detrimental to public morals and calculated to produce pernicious effect, in depriving and debauching the minds of person."

Pakistan NWFP to come under ShariahThe hardline Islamist alliance government in Pakistan's volatile Northwest Frontier Province has decided to bring the state under Shariah [revealed and the canonical laws of the religion of Islam]. The NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, heading the six-party fundamentalist Muthahida Majlis-e-Amal government, said he has approved the recommendations of Nifaze-e-Shariat Council to bring a new Shariat Act to implement Islamic laws in the province.

Each year, thousands of Pakistani children learn from history books that Jews are tightfisted moneylenders and Christians vengeful conquerors. One textbook tells kids they should be willing to die as martyrs for Islam. They aren't being indoctrinated by extremist mullahs in madrasas, the private Islamic seminaries often blamed for stoking militancy in Pakistan. They are pupils in public schools learning from textbooks approved by the administration of President Pervez Musharraf.

"They are the biggest madrasas in the [North-West] Frontier," he told me proudly after stopping to say a prayer at the al-Qaeda shrine. "The books are free. The food is free. The education is free. We give them free accommodation. In a poor and backward area like this, our madrasas are the only form of education. The government system is simply not here. ""There are 200,000 jobless degree holders in this country. Mark my words, a more extreme form of the Taliban is coming to Pakistan. We teach them in the madrasas that only Islam can provide the justice they seek."

China Launching Constant Attacks on US Military Networks

U.S. military computer networks are under constant attack. And the rate of attack is skyrocketing, from 300 in 2003 to more than 75,000 last year. "Our adversaries are able to inflict a substantial amount of harassment and a measurable amount of damage upon DOD communications networks at practically no cost to themselves," says the director of technology for the military group responsible for defending networks. So who is our adversary? Who is checking constantly for ways to breach Defense systems and learn about classified military plans? Al Qaeda? China, according to an article today on FCW.com. The article quotes former Army chief of staff Jack Keane: "The Chinese were doing this on a regular basis. That’s a given. They’re very aggressively getting capability. It’s common knowledge in the Pentagon." Chinese Presence Grows in Russian Far East

In the mosquito-infested fields of Russia's Far East, Chinese pick tomatoes. In the markets, they sell cheap jeans and backpacks and fix shoes. At construction sites, they rebuild cities. As China and Russia embark on a new stage of cooperation by holding joint military exercises launched from the Pacific port of Vladivostok, the Chinese presence is growing in this hardscrabble region thousands of miles from Moscow. It's too early to talk of an imminent Chinese takeover, local experts say, despite such worries by some Russian politicians. Still, they acknowledge that China's hunger for resources and territory as its population and economy boom could eventually make the Far East an alluring target. "Russia has 30 to 40 years to become an equal partner with China in Asia. ... If Russia doesn't, then China could start to have territorial pretensions," said Mikhail Shinkovskiy, director of the Institute of International Relations and Social Technologies at Vladivostok State University of Economics and Science. Russia seized the Far East from China in the 1800s, back when Russian imperial ambitions were at their height and China was a weak country that could be pushed around. Now, the tables are turned. China's military is seeking to broaden its influence while Russian forces deteriorate to a shadow of their former Soviet might.

"France is in a pre-revolutionary situation."

The combination of the largest group of Muslims in Western Europe and a failing economy could prove fatal for France:

France facing a tidal wave of protestFrance could face its worst period of social unrest for a decade, analysts and commentators warned, as Dominique de Villepin's centre-right government returns today from its summer break. With petrol prices soaring, economic growth hesitant, trade unions furious, public confidence in the country and its political leaders at rock-bottom and a string of unpopular reforms still lying ahead, conditions are ripe for what one analyst, Gerard Mermet, called "genuine social upheaval". The first cabinet meeting of the new political year will be chaired by a president, Jacques Chirac, whose approval ratings have barely budged since the cataclysm of France's No vote to the EU constitution in May, when he became the most unpopular French head of state ever. With economic growth standing at just 0.1% in the second quarter, and Paris under strong pressure from Brussels to bring its deficit back to below the EU's 3% ceiling, the prime minister will also find it almost impossible to finalise a state budget for 2006 without big cuts in public spending - each provoking further unrest. Le Monde warned in a recent editorial that the "rentrée" will Mr de Villepin's "first real test". The sociologist Mr Mermet was more pessimistic: "Things will radicalise," he said. "There is a real risk of explosion: we are in a pre-revolutionary situation."

A new study has shown how instrumental the internet was for the no campaigners in France, after a wave of analyses on why French voters rejected the EU Constitution in their May referendum. Carried out by researchers at the University of Technology of Compiegne, the report reveals that those against the constitution mainly invested in websites for their campaigns. It also showed that on the 295 sites dedicated to the referendum campaign, 67 percent of those asked to give their opinion on the EU charter voted no. "The web served as a political tribunal for those who considered themselves distanced from television formats or big-time media, transforming the web into a sort of negative medium", according to the authors of the research, Franck Ghitalla and Guilhem Fouetillou. This negative medium appeared to help reinforce the negative vote, they add. The authors also show how small virtual communities were gradually built up around the no campaign on the internet. The movement even had its own stars, with one no campaigner's site getting up to 30,000 hits a day.

Shots fired at Pakistani-born comic’s Oslo restaurant

I've mentioned before that the most famous Norwegian of Pakistani background is incidentally a very Westernized woman, humorist Shabana Rehman. She is known, among other things, for pulling a stunt where she lifted up Mullah Krekar, the controversial former leader of the militant group Ansar al-Islam, who has lived on welfare in Oslo for years. She later declared that she was no longer a stand-up comedienne, but a lift-up comedienne. Shabana has been controversial for years. She started her career by appearing naked, with a Norwegian flag painted on her body, on the front page of Norway's largest newspaper. It looks as if somebody thinks she's gone too far this time, by dropping her pants and baring her buttocks at a film festival in Haugesund, in southwest Norway. Shabana has been threatened before, but I believe this is the first time somebody has fired shots and threatened her family, not just herself. This would have been unheard of only a few years ago, and shows that this is no longer the safe country I grew up in. TheMuslim forum Desi.no is full of hateful posts about her, and respected blog Dokument.no asks whether Shabana risks becoming another Theo van Gogh:

Unidentified assailants on Wednesday fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comediene who has achieved prominence for lampooning conservative Islam. Shabana Rehman, the 28-year-old comediene whose sister owns the restaurant, described the incident as “an appalling act of terror” and said it would not deter her from continuing her work. The shots, fired at around 4:00 am, struck the windows of the restaurant of Fahrina Rehman, the sister of Shabana Rehman. A police spokesman said the establishment was closed, and nobody was hurt. Rehman has made a career of joking about the cultural divide between Norway’s people and its Muslim community. She notably made headlines in the popular press last week by dropping her pants and baring her buttocks at a film festival in Haugesund, in southwest Norway. “I want to show that in Norway, you can do such things without being lynched or arrested,” she said. “I get really angry when I see cultural conflicts, suicide bombers, all these kinds of threats. You can’t do a stunt like this in Karachi or Kabul.” Rehman then went on to kiss vigorously Norway’s female Culture Minister Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, seeking to make a point about a debate raging in the country’s Pakistani community over a film scene showing a young Pakistani girl kissing a Norwegian boy. Oslo police said it was too soon to make a link between the shots at the restaurant and the comedian’s film festival antics, but Rehman herself clearly saw one. “I’m going to continue doing my job despite what has happened,” she told Norway’s NTB news agency. Police said she was being protected, although they did not give details. The young woman, who was one when her parents moved to Norway with their seven children in 1977, has often courted controversy since 1999 when she went from writing jokes for a comedian friend to doing her own show. She typically begins her act wearing a burqa, which she then strips away to reveal a tight, red cocktail dress.

There are many non-Muslims who have studied Islam. They have come across stories that interest and attract them towards visiting the holy cities of Makkah and Madina. However, by law non-Muslims are not allowed in the holy cities of Makkah and Madina. Shaikh Asim Al-Hakeem says that the visiting of the holy cities by the non-Muslims is prohibited in Islam and it is stated in the Qur an. Huge sign boards can be seen on entering the boundary of both Makkah and Madina, stating the prohibition of the non-Muslims to enter. The prohibition mentioned in the Qur an is only for the Holy city of Makkah, Hakeem said. Hakeem said that visiting by the non-Muslims of the Prophet s mosque is not forbidden in Islam. The ban for the non-Muslims visiting the Prophet s mosque is the Saudi government law, said Hakeem. The Qur an states the prohibited boundary for the non-Muslims, which is the area wider than the holy mosque itself. The proscribed area is not just the mosque itself but also the city, said Al-Hakeem. It is not appropriate for non-Muslims to object to the restriction on them to enter Makkah and Madina. The Saudi Government bans the visiting of the non-Muslims as a protection of the Prophet s mosque and to avoid any intrigues or attempts at the destruction of the holiest and most valuable places of Islam.